Considering my usual tendencies towards the darker, brooding, far too narcissistic and self-indulgent end of the musical spectrum, The Dont’s Those Delicate Chemicals embraced my ears with a welcome sense of levity. Their third album (and the first one I’ve had the pleasure of delving into), Those Delicate Chemicals really stands out as being able to deliver the practices of a heady and experimental band through the parameters of a delightful pop-like sound. With its layers of charming guitar riffs, delicately placed textural oddities and an overall exuberant atmosphere, Those Delicate Chemicals could very well be the pop anthem for your art school experience… and I mean that in the most sincere way I can muster.

Considering how surprisingly small San Francisco can seem, it comes as no surprise to hear influences from formerly local avant-rock stars 60-Watt Kid throughout this album (no more apparent then in the final two songs “Backtalk” and “The Will of God”). Perhaps they’re friends, perhaps they’ve just seen each others shows on a number of occasions, but the jagged ethereal and heavy tremolo guitar layers that appear throughout the songs of both bands is obviously comparable. Serving as one of the many interesting layers throughout Those Delicate Chemicals, these wonderfully well-placed interruptions serve a vital role to elevate the pop framework to a vast and intricate soundscape.

Opening with their call and response anthem “Which Side You’re On (The Pirate Song)” Those Delicate Chemicals kicks off with a cheeky wink and a smile. You’d love it if its clarion call asking “what side you’re on” is The Dont’s feeling the waters for whose side the listener is on, but lets not mince words; this is a song about pirates, and pirates will “get it done.” Surly as their “piratic oath” would demand, the song leads its crowd in a triumphant bellowing of “ARRRRRRRRR. “ I imagine this is not a moment to miss at their performances.

Leading immediately into one of my favorite songs on the album, “Breakdown,” Those Delicate Chemicals moves on past its initial playfulness to its slightly more serious, but still jubilant, elements. While the songs change somewhat in tonality, listening across Those Delicate Chemicals it’s hard to pigeonhole it with one thematic quality. Not at all to its detriment, Those Delicate Chemicals seems to lack a greater arch to its narrative. There is depth to the individual songs, but short of the fastidiously executed sound, there seems little that ties them together. Favorites certainly pop out (“Regardless, The Goddess,” “Peacetime,” and “Gasoline” come to mind) but there is a certain distance held between the music and any underlying concept for the album.

Perhaps that's just the point. The Dont’s keep the audience at a distance with their Ramones style surname uniformity, and maybe by withholding just enough the mask serves to direct the listeners attention to the complexities of the sound as opposed to the distraction of a message. The mask is their tool of misdirection.

The Dont’s Those Delicate Chemicals is definitely an album to seek out. Elaborate and boisterous, Those Delicate Chemicals is the type of intelligent and experimental pop sound that is very hard to come by. It carries with it a depth that rivals its avant counterparts, but is delivered with the accessibility many similar sounding artists lack. I encourage you to add it to your collection if for no other reason than to scream “ARRRRR” every time that pirate captain demands.

-Ada Lann

The Dont's Those Delicate Chemicals can be purchased here.

From the outset Business 80's debut Strangers With Me quivers with a looming sensation of darkness. It oozes a sadness that lurks in the darkest corners of its sound. A collage of glitching synthesized sounds, live instruments, and ominously sung vocals, Business 80 is the latest project by local songwriter H.A. Eugene (whose previous creation, Burbank International's City of Burbank, put him squarely on the Bay Area's music scene map) and a dramatic turn from the tender folk sounds of his previous work.

A mostly electronic album, Strangers With Me is broken into three movements, each (for reasons not outwardly clear) named after Tenderloin bars (Koko, Hemlock, and Ha-Ra). With driving industrial rhythms and often piercing electronic squelches throughout Strangers With Me, apt comparisons to acts like Nine Inch Nails (or a much harder version of Depeche Mode) certainly jump to mind, peppered with a spirit of IDM from the likes of Plaid, Autechre, or even Squarepusher (maybe a stretch).

Opening amidst a wash of penetrating electronic sounds and almost choked vocal gurgles, the eerie and despondent "Koko" begins the section of the same name. As with most the songs on this album, an intricate depth characterizes the soundscape of this song, with multiple pieces waiting to be found amidst the layers. Trapped in a loop, the album title is repeated endlessly as the synth sounds punctuate the space of the song. The result of this, as the line "strangers with me" is muttered ad nauseum, is an unnerving level of violence to the loneliness evoked throughout "Koko."

"Who Died?" follows, and with it's crescendoing viola line it may well be my favorite track on this album (the track that follows being a close second). Coupled with an ethereal-sounding arppegiated synth-line, and one of the more forceful and driving bass outros I've had the pleasure of hearing, this song really sends chills down the spine.

If "Who Died?'s" outro is an emotional ascension, "Mad at Nothing" is its zenith. Certainly the funkiest track on the album, "Mad at Nothing," if for its title only, really captures the spirit of Strangers With Me. There is a feeling of impudent rage that permeates throughout the narrative of these songs. From the anger and the drive that pushes the vamping repetition of the line "never learned shit, got stupider stupider," to the flailing rage that percolates from Mad at nothing, to the suffocating impotence of "Getting Sick for Real" and "This Place Where We Used to Play," there is an invisible force that torments the character of Strangers With Me.

All things considered, with its tumultuous layers of electronic sounds, Strangers With Me is an alluring and schizophrenic emotional ride. Peppered with rage, terror, loneliness and pure driven anguish Strangers With Me is a fascinatingly complicated album.

-Ada Lann

Note: Strangers With Me can be purchased here.

Birds & Batteries’ Up To No Good is a complex blend of creepy and dance-y.

Hard to categorize throughout, Michael Sempert’s disaffected and sliding vocals hold this 2009 EP together through five eclectic tracks that bring ominous bass together with psychedelic guitar, creepy keyboard chimes, and distorted whistles. They only break from the task of making the listener feel like he’s lost in the dark by occasionally turning on their dance party floor lights.

This EP is intricate, and lends itself to multiple listening sessions. “The Villain” starts you off feeling alone and confused, with plenty of well-placed synth noise to bolster the freaky guitars and dark lyrics. The excellent harmonies are the lightest part of the song, with the backup voices sounding downright cheery compared to the lead vocalist’s slow drawl. The eerie theme developed in this first track sticks around for most of Up To No Good. Though the short “Lonely Guns” elevates the tone into something more upbeat in preparation for the jaunty third track, “Out in the Woods,” you still hear plenty of those whistling keyboard runs in both tracks (complete with a sudden tempo change or two) to keep you tripping out about the whole experience. There’s even judicious use of that slide whistle sound that makes me think I’ve spotted a UFO, X-Files style.

You know the sound I’m talking about.

“Lightning (UTNC Version)” is their get-up-and-dance track, switching the beat over to a drum machine (or just a well-emulated drum machine feel) that occasionally drops out to leave the vocalist and keyboard on their own. Once I’m reminded to be freaked out, they turn the beat back on. This track is great but it is a partial break from the resonating feel of the rest of the EP. It’s their dark synth-pop moment punctuating the EP’s crescendo before they drop it back down for the final track. If Up To No Good was longer than 20 minutes (and I truly wish it was) I’d expect one or two more songs in this vein, and as it is I’m left wanting more.

Concluding with “Sneaky Times,” they finish up with some compelling vocals that alternately stretch out and rush through the lyrics in between really phenomenal bass lines, bringing us back down from “Lightning” into a slower groove. This is a great final track on a great EP, a good mixture of a funky feel with the unhinged hollowness that I came to expect by the end Up To No Good.

Birds & Batteries never commit themselves completely to any particular genre here, but still end up with a bizarrely cohesive feel that you should definitely experience for yourself. For the San Franciscan with a vehicle, they’ll be playing in Davis on April 10th. I on the other hand, will eagerly wait for a San Francisco show date to materialize.

-Kyle Wheat

Editors Note: Birds and Batteries Up To No Good can be purchased digitally at iTunes. For a hard copy contact Birds and Batteries here.

Manuel’s Parking Lot pays tribute where tribute is due. Jake Sinetos and Alex Musto invoke Joni Mitchell’s most well known hit with both the title of the CD and the intro. They close with Eugene (Please Don’t Take My Van), which has opening lines that will take anybody back the childhood where they were forced to listen to Dolly Parton by the Country & Western loving parents. I still have nightmares of those days. Though the album is far from anything resembling actual country, it does call on both folk and do-wop. The opening track, You Stole My Grandma (Let you Granny go Round), mixes folk rhythms on the guitar with do-wop style background vocals. My knee jerk reaction was, “This will never work.” I am happy to say that after multiple listenings, it does work. Quite well in fact.

The opening piece sets the tone for most of the album. Stripped down music, primarily just guitar tambourine, accented with the occasional sound clip or electric guitar riff. The CD maintains the sound, only slowing down for Dinosaur (twee pop a lop), which serves as the nostalgic ballad, making me long for days of recess twice a day. It also makes me wish I knew the rules to “…the game we called dinosaur.”

The most rousing track, and probably my favorite, is Fuck Art Lets dance (A Symphony in 3 Movements). The boys actual pull of three movements, encouraging their listeners to get out on the dance floor. The further flaunt their knowledge of artists before them with the Orwellian named Knowing is Unkowing. All though Big Brother would be proud of their prowess in Double Speak, it’s more a call to look beyond the thin surface and find the beauty underneath. To look critically and appreciatively view at the world around us, with a special emphasis on the music we listen too.

Manuel’s Parking Lot is a must have for someone who is looking for fun music with something to say. It’s the kind of music that forces you to nod in time and hum along, even at the office. Sinetos and Musto may borrow a bit from other artists, but make no mistake, they have used it to create something truly unique in a musicscape where everybody is trying to be different just like everyone else.

Manuel’s Parking Lot is available for download on iTunes. Your discriminating music tastes will be wanting with out it.

-Jonathon L. Miller

It seems uncanny that Maus Haus (a large group of musicians) can maintain staying power without crumbling under the weight of their own eclecticism; most other groups with similarly eccentric sound have very few members. Yet Maus Haus seems to have found a way to push onward and upward defiantly, following last years strikingly unique Lark Marvels, born out of living room musings, with an equally impressive collection of tracks built around the 7-inch EP Winter/Zig Zag. For all of Lark Marvels' cavalier creation, and any aloofness that may have permeated those recordings as a result, Maus Haus’ latest recordings reveal a band further coalescing and maturing their sound.

With something of an eerie feel, “Winter” on Side A of the 7 inch, descends on you like a heavy blizzard in a swirl of bass-y synthesizer sounds and mono-syllabic vocal harmonies -- certainly a staple of music with a heavy psyche influence. With the air of a dispassionate homily, “Winter” creates the feeling of a cold deserted street complete with a disembodied voice advising us to “look at the mess we’ve made." A part of me wants to think this is the band telling us to pay close attention to the mess of sounds we’re about to be thrown into. If I had to guess I'd say these boys have been listening to a lot of Syd Barrett, as the lyrical style of “Winter” (and many of these new tracks as well) implore the somewhat syncopated rhythmic singing style that owes a lot to Syd’s influence.

Kicking off like a fall down a deep hole, Side B’s “Zig Zag” thunders along like a demented fun-house ride. Contrasting “Winter’s” trundle, “Zig Zag” is driven by an upbeat tempo, a powerfully forceful bass line, and a cavernous layer of vocals. Certainly the more complex of the two (if its feel is not apparent in its title) “Zig Zag” changes rapidly, jerking the listener along it’s intricate journey.

Though these two songs make a brief and very dense 7-inch, it seems Maus Haus was not entirely done, releasing these two songs along with an additional three as the digital EP Sea-Sides. Sounding like it could very well have been left off Lark Marvels “Skyward Housing,” the first of the remaining digital tracks is a well-earned bit of levity from the darker tone of the 7-inch. True to its title, “Skyward Housing” builds a rising crescendo of synthesizer sounds in an electronic whirlwind. With a driving siren like melody, "Skyward Housing" builds up the movement towards the more ambient plateau that closes out the EP.

Creating a subdued mood with a more cavernous electronic soundscape, the final tracks "Sunshine" and "Sneaky Feelings" come well-versed in the lessons of Brian Eno circa Another Green World. The tones of these tracks carry less of a punch then the preceding ones, relying instead on a fuller more ethereal construction with multiple layers of synthesizer sounds. There is a nice calmness at work in these two that function as a soothing dénouement from the more intense moments earlier in the EP.

A fantastic follow up, Maus Haus’ latest recordings carry themselves with the gravitas of a band really getting comfortable in their own groove. Thematically there is something much darker at work in these new recordings, but the chills instigated by the eeriness of the sounds are exciting to experience nonetheless. Let’s hope for a full-length in the near future.

-Ada Lann

The 7-inch Winter/Zig Zag can be purchased here from Rocinante Records. Download cards for Sea-Sides are available free with the purchase of a 7-inch.

With the feel of a desperate man at his breaking point, beseeching an immeasurable abyss, Weekend’s debut 10-inch EP is a considerable needle to thread though the ear. Though fuzz inadequately describes the level of distortion on the guitars, Weekend’s hypnotic noise-rock owes much to A Place to Bury Strangers and the traditions of My Bloody Valentine and Yo La Tengo, but imbues the complexity of that shrill, droning musical style with the tender naïveté of best of saccharine pop melody.

Rocking back and forth like a hand on a cradle, “All American” opens up the EP with equal parts penetrating guitar and a lulling rhythm and melody line. It has the soothing quality of falling asleep with your head next to an open window in a car speeding down the highway. As the song progresses and the guitars layer, Weekend creates an intricate space of almost white noise in which the listener may wander about. There is much to explore in the delicate layers of texture, while a disembodied voice continuously ask us where we are going.

Flipping over, “Youth Haunts” opens up with a piercing squeal that rang through my apartment, startling me and waking the neighbor’s baby. Needless to say, he wasn’t happy. With a driving melody like pistons slamming, “Youth Haunts” ebbs and flows like an elaborate sea of noise. Between the two I’d say this is my favorite. Though both have a lot to offer, “Youth Haunts” has wraith-like eeriness to it with several lovely different sounds to seek out in each listen.

Permeated with tangible chills, Weekend’s EP is certainly not for the faint of heart. Layered in textures of fuzz and distortion, this EP offers as much as it asks from the listener and should be a part of any noise-connoisseur’s collection.

-Ada Lann

Weekend's debut 10-inch can be purchased here from Mexican Summer. Download cards are available with purchase.